Research goal: Enhance manufacturing competitiveness through digital innovation and intelligence.
I am interested in investigating scientific phenomena and utilizing the knowledge to transform manufacturing engineering applications which helps reveal novel advanced manufacturing systems. My research is focused on three pillars: (i) design, (ii) materials, and (iii) processes of advanced manufacturing and digitization. The research marked a shift in the way scientists think about part-process-performance, allowing a synchronized approach between topology, material, and manufacturing/delivery systems stitched with data synchronization, which is evaluated in both digital and physical environments. My research aims to provide a manufacturing innovation platform for capturing advanced manufacturing ingenuity in the critical sectors of the US economy (healthcare, aerospace, automotive, and consumer goods). The scholarly program objectives are to pursue the scientific questions in manufacturing science, procure major grant funding, to continue collaboration on projects through multidisciplinary teams.
Bio-ink development and bio-manufacturing: Khoda, B. et. al. 2021 JMSE; Khoda, B. et. al. 2019 JMP; Khoda, B. et. al. 2018 Materials;
The goal of this research is to develop a high-throughput tissue and spheroids construction process by using material and process science as a rapid manufacturing technique. We developed a novel spheroid fabrication technique with cell-laden bioink by optimizing the hydrogel material composition, including Alginate, CMC, TO-NFC, and nano-clay. The developed bio-ink material demonstrated higher cell viability (~90%) compare to the common bio-ink (~80%) used in the literature. The bio-ink also demonstrated better mechanical properties and large 3D scaffold structures (>1cm height) were printed with better shape fidelity. The new bio-ink composition will help to design further experiments and study the cell behavior in such a micro-environment. Such investigation will help to answer scientific questions like the cell-material interactions, cell growth dynamics in synthetic media, etc. This will help us to build/manufacture functional tissue and organ in an artificial environment.
Novel Metal Additive Fabrication with Thin Rod: Khoda, B. et. al. 2021 3DPAM; Khoda, B. et. al. 2021 Sci. Report; Khoda, B. et. al. 2021 3DPAM
A novel additive metal structure process is developed with a continuous rod and the goal is to fill the ‘opportunity void’ in the Ashby chart (increased modulus with lower density). Current 3D printing processes utilize low dimensional forms of feed-stock materials, i.e., powder, liquid vet, or semi-molten filament to construct metal parts. Their incremental consolidation often results in uncontrollable thermo-mechanical behavior in the tool-less 3DP process brings (a) diverse and amorphous (metastable) microstructure (b) higher contamination and (c) shrinkage and disconnected nodes. Fabricating lattice structures with 1D metallic wires/rods have several advantages compared to other forms of material, i.e., powder, 2D sheet, liquid metal. They are easy to handle, radially available, cheap compared to other forms of metals, minimal waste, and homogeneous.
Micro-nano Material Transfer with Liquid Career System: Khoda, B. et. al. 2021 JMNM; Khoda, B et. al. 2021 JMSE
Improved understanding of particle transfer processes from a complex mixture is critical to address current challenges facing the manufacture of next-generation materials and devices, including tubular structures, synthetic blood vessels, tissue scaffolds, flexible electronics, filtrations, and meta-surfaces regulating optical, acoustic, and magnetic waves. For the first time, my lab reported particle transfer from complex mixtures by entrapment process. The goal of the research is to examine entrapment phenomena in complex mixture that are hypothesized to deliver sorted micro-nano particles using the hydrodynamic flow and viscous layer. We define ‘particle transfer with entrapment’ as a particle delivery process when the solid substrate surfaces are submerged in liquid mixtures, prior to substrate withdrawal. In addition to the significance of this work for the innovative material system, the findings will advance the manufacturing systems in transfer printing, foundry coating, material joining, surface protection, and soft robotics. The project studies the underlying physical mechanism of entrapment and sorting in order to understand the interactions between physical governing forces and particle transfer (both entrapment and entrainment).
Resource Efficiency in Additive Technology: Khoda, B. et. al. 2020 JMSE; Khoda, B et. al. 2018 RPJ; Khoda, B et. al. 2017 JMP; Khoda, B et. al. 2017 RCIM
The goal of this research is to create process behaviors analytics for solid and cellular porous 3D-printed objects. One of the major constraints of additive manufacturing processes is that they consume a significant amount of resources (i.e., time, energy and material, support structure and cost) to fabricate parts, which is often tied to the part and process attributes. The objective is to establish a relationship among design, geometry, process variables, material distribution, and AM capabilities while establishing resource consumption mechanisms. This research is built upon balancing the hierarchical AM eco-system with primary emphasis on the pre-processing stage followed by downstream optimization.
Porous infill design and 3D printing: Khoda, B. et. al. 2021 JMSE; Khoda, B. et. al. 2018 RPJ;
A new fabrication pattern for honeycomb infill is proposed for additive manufacturing applications. The proposed pattern will uniformly distribute the material and can accommodate controllable variational honeycomb infill while maintaining continuity with relative ease. The infill structures are fabricated with both uniform and variational patterns, which are then compared with the traditional tool-path pattern with compression testing. The results show that the proposed design demonstrates uniform densification under compression and performs better while absorbing more energy. Studying novel pattern and their impact on mechanical properties will help understand the design-performance relationship of the 3D printed parts.